last week, and was told that an old brasier there, who had left off business, had several. I wish I could purchase them if worth it. One Blakemore, a sadler at Newport Pagnel, if left for me at his shop there, would send it me: three or four enclosed in a Frank would come safe; and your goodness in this respect, and indulgence in pardoning this notice, will ever oblige one who is, with tender of best respects to your lady and self, and wishes of your health, and family's, good Doctor, "Your most devoted humble servant, BROWNE WILLIS *." July 14, 1745. "GOOD DOCTor, "I hope you got well down to Stamford, and that your lady and self are in good health, which I shall be glad to hear; and pray pardon my seconding my request about Traders' Tokens. I think I enclosed a frank. But cannot you send some for me to Mr. Blackmore's? If you have not opportunity of sending so, a Stamford Trader or Town Piece will come in a Letter; and pray, Doctor, favour me in this respect; who am, with tender of best respects to your lady and self and family, begging your excuse of this scrawl, your most humble servant, to command, "DEAR SIR, BROWNE WILLIS." Dublin, Jan. 5, 1747. "After having acknowledged the favours I received from you at Stamford, I heartily congratulate you on your preferment in the Capital, by the distinguishing eye of the Duke of Montague. This must give all lovers of Learning and Antiquity a particular pleasure, as it will give you a greater opportunity of pursuing your observations, and obliging the world with them; and I hope that this is only a step to some better preferment. I had a much more pleasant and successful journey than I could reasonably expect, considering the time of year; but the season was very fine to the last, though it was about two months after I left you before I came to my own house. I can give you an account of nothing in England but what you have seen, except the Pavement at Winterton, which I believe you will see engraved from Dr. Drake's drawing. I had a letter from him lately, in which he says he has been to see a third Pavement, discovered near the others since I was there; which, I suppose, will be engraved with the others. "I do assure you, the part of Scotland I travelled through is very well worth seeing; the journey from Berwick, almost all the way near the sea, and the Frith, is a very pleasant ride; a great number of fine situations are seen near the sea. You may be assured that I was curious enough to go on the spots of Preston Pans and Falkirk. The situations of Edinburgh and Sterling, which resemble one another, are very extraordinary; and the former, especially, has a very singular appearance on account of the hills and rocks, which from the East seem almost to hang over it. The prospect from one is very pleasant in the view of the meanders of the river Forth, and from the other of * The celebrated Antiquary. See the "Literary Anecdotes," vol. VII. pp. 469, 713. the the Frith, of the towns on the other side of it, and the islands in it. Lord Hopeton's, seven miles beyond Edinburgh, is one of the finest situations I ever beheld, on the Frith; and the house and offices are to outward appearance very grand. Glasgow is the best laid out and best built town in the King's dominions; and the country about the Clyde is very fine. "When I came over to Ireland I saw the greatest natural curiosity in the world, which surpasses the account we have of it, I mean, what they call the Giant's Causeway. I have writ some account of it to a Friend, which I believe you will hear of. "I find I had Stonehenge from you, though I forgot it! I had also Abury, and the Remarks on an Ode of Horace. I received great civilities from Baron Clerk, and made your compliments to him. He is almost the only searcher into Antiquities I met with. "I shall at all times be glad of the pleasure of hearing from you; and now you are in the Capital you can never want matter for correspondence, though I may be put to it here. "I am, with great regard, "DEAR DOCTOR, RICHARD POCOCKE." "This waits on you to wish you and yours many happy years. "I thank you for your kind present of Oriuna, and do admire the erudition of it. I hope we shall soon see Carausius. Your derivation from Ululue is very just; they call it here the Irish Pululu. — Dr. Milles has one of the Egyptian locks. "Your Letter of the 3d of September, 1743, came under the Archbishop of Canterbury's frank, and I heard nothing of Mr. Haleron. It is very easy to send you all the Carausiuses in the cabinets of this kingdom, for there are none; I will look over mine, and see what I have, and give you an account of them. "I am sure there was a colony here from Egypt, the Old Milesians from the Nomos Miletes. I take it, when the Continent was in wars in the fifth and sixth centuries, people came over to study, as to a place of quiet; but I believe the learning was very little. We are doing nothing here; only the County of Kerry is coming out. "Before this year is at an end, I hope to have the pleasure of kissing your hand in England; uncertain whether I shall land in the West, or in the North, and come along the Tees, and all down the Eastern coast; any intimation from you would be very agreeable. My Western tour is to be along the Northern coast on the Bristol Channel; and so through the heart of Wiltshire. I am, with great regard, RICHARD POCOCKE." Sept. 21, 1754. "VERY REVEREND, AND (WHAT IS BETTER) VERY GOOD SIR, "This is the first moment of ability I have had, to thank you for the very great honour and favour of your calling on me. In you, the Priest excels the Samaritan; your humanity and benevolence shine, not only in your aspect and words, but your actions; as your learning and erudition are not ostentatious, but genuine, and solidly useful. — When you called, I was at my re pose; DRS. POCOCKE and Henley to Dr. STUKELEY. 809 pose; and feared also that one who attends me (I wish, you had, were it not for the trouble) would meet you. "I have been ill these eight weeks. My disease was from an atrabilious, hot, saline acrimony in my blood. I am liable to a cachexy, scorbutic, and jaundiced; with eruptions in my face and head, and a Saint Antony's fire. I wish the Saint had kept his fire to himself; the flames of Saints are more mischievous than the wicked. I have been purifying my blood by some mixture of flores sulphuris, &c. &c. My skin is generally smooth, and myself, thank God, healthful. I have a good stomach, but cannot rest well. I am very sure, an honest Esculapius would cure me soon, and no relapse. I have been reading Dr. Turner, Quincy, Fuller, and Surgey, about it but I will not use the least mercury. I know the cause was internal, and is in the acrimonious humours, and that proper moderate physic would help; but I am a Rationalist, and love to enquire into ingredients, and no Doctors will talk reason with me. They are like Popish Priests, and demand implicit faith. I beg, dear Doctor, you would consider well this, and take my health under your guardianship. And, I have a servant, who has lived with me sixteen years, who, from an old contusion in her leg, is almost lame. Surgeons make only jobs of these things, as Physicians do. She has cost me a great deal of money; but, I doubt, she must go into the Infirmary, if she cannot come into a more summary cure, internal and external, without relapse. I wish you would be so kind and compassionate to her as to write for her. [Christ was a servant, and a physician; and, I think, he lived upon physic. The word, in the Acts, nor is there salvation in any other, is, in the Greek, ass, healing; and forgiving sins, was curing distempers, which were God's penalties for sins, executed by evil demons; and the word soul means the life, the person; nay, sometimes it signifies a dead man.-This, by the bye.]-I wish I could wait on you, but my eruptions in my face are the only things that hinder my coming abroad, or into my Oratory; which always was, is, and shall be, at your service. "I could send a messenger to receive what you write, if you condescend to do it for me and my servant. I pray God keep your most valuable health and life, and your good family. I wish you would make this (asking pardon for interrupting you so long) the object of some mature practical reflections. I wish I was in the Church to preach for you now and then, being, with the truest veneration, Sir, your most devoted and hearty friend and servant, J. HENLEY." Teddington, Sept. 25, 1758. "DEAR SIR, "I return you hearty thanks for so zealously interesting yourself in behalf of Mrs. St. Amand, who has for a great part of a long life been in a most distressed condition, through no fault of hers, but from an unkind husband. A gentlewoman in my house has for several years past given her yearly a guinea. She will now think herself very rich. Her widow-sister Warnford, * The well-known Orator; see the "Literary Anecdotes," vol. I. p. 384. who who has supported her, has but 30l. per annum, a shameful scanty allowance, from her husband's brother, who came to a good estate by his death, and who had been maintained by his brother when living. The Princess has left off Sunday drawing-rooms, when she resides in town; and the King's drawing-room at St. James's, immediately after Divine Service, is, as I am told, very short. She is obliged to go every Saturday to London, in order to at tend the King's drawing-room the next day at Kensington; and has every other Sunday a drawing-room in town, to avoid the coming purposely to town on a week-day. "Alas! too many are the causes of our dissoluteness! But the grand depraver of the morals of the lower people is that greatest of all evils, because both a natural and moral evil, drams. Were I sure that what I have done in relation to Ventilators, &c. &c. would be a means of bettering the health, and prolonging the lives, of an hundred millions of persons, it would not give me near the satisfaction that I have from the pleasing reflection of having, for near thirty years past, borne my public testimony in books and newspapers against drams eleven times; and the last time, in my book on Ventilators, which I lately published, in which I have exerted myself at large, with the strongest expostulations, in hopes to rouse the attention and indignation of mankind against this mighty debaser and destroyer of the human species. And as there are many things in that book which will be of great benefit to mankind, so I am in hopes that the cautions I give against those, worse than infernal, spirits, will be the more attended to, and taken in good part. With this view I have sent the book to the principal Nations in Europe, as far as to Petersburg, the greatest gin-shop in the world; for that Empress has the whole monopoly of them. And I have, for some months past, given orders to send 400 of that book to all our Colonies in America, from Barbadoes to Hudson's Bay, sending with each parcel pressing letters to the several Governors against those decolonizing legions of evil spirits; which I cannot forbear looking on as the third woe in the Revelations, a woe much sorer and greater than the sum total of all the other woes there denounced. "Ventilators are now in such esteem in our Fleet, that they work them incessantly night and day. "If, when the Princess comes to reside in town, you should have a call towards Duke's Court, St. Martin's Lane, on a Saturday, after twelve o'clock, I should be glad to see a Fellow Collegiate old acquaintance. With what a number of years have we been blessed beyond those of many of our contemporaries! The infirmities of age will not permit me to visit you. I am, Sir, your affectionate humble servant, STEPHEN HALES *. 66 Pray my respects to Mrs. Sisson and her Sister, to whom Mrs. Gillow in my house sends hers." * This excellent Divine and very able Natural Philosopher, whilst at Bene't College, Cambridge, employed his hours of relaxation in the study of Botany and Anatomy, in which Dr. Stukeley was his constant compaDion. He was many years Minister of Teddington; where he died June 4, 1764, aged 84. He was one of the witnesses to Mr. Pope's Will. LETTERS LETTERS from the Rev. Mr. WARBURTON to the Rev. Dr. PHILIP Doddridge *. "REVEREND AND WORTHY SIR, London, April 19, 1738, "I found the very agreeable favour of your Letter of the 13th instant in London, where I am lately come for a few days. I can now easily forgive the Country Clergyman †; as owing to him, in some measure, the acquisition of such a friendship as I flatter myself, Sir, to reap in you. And, though you give so polite a turn to that occasion, I must never suffer myself to believe that it was any merit in my book, but a generous indignation against an abandoned libeller, that has procured me the honour of so considerable a patroniser. "I will assure you, Sir, that, next to the service of Truth, my aim in writing was to procure myself the favour and friendship of good and learned men. So that you will not wonder that I accept the friendship you are pleased to offer me in so generous and polite a manner, with all the pleasure that gifts most esteemed amongst men are generally received. Difference of religious persuasion, amongst sincere professors, never was, I thank God, any reason of restraining or abating my esteem for men of your character in life and learning. "I have read your Proposals for The Family Expositor;' and have entertained, from the specimen, so high an opinion of your Notes and Paraphrase, that, had I any thing material on the Gospels, I should be very cautious (without affectation) of laying them before so accurate a Critick, notwithstanding all the temptations I should have of appearing in so honourable a station. But the truth is, I have little of this kind on the Evangelists worth your notice, and your work is already in the press but you shall be sure to command what I have on the other parts of the New Testament on occasion, if of any service to you. In the mean time, I make it my request to be admitted into the list of your Subscribers. I shall pay the subscription-money to : * Large as the present volume already is, I cannot resist the pleasure of inserting in it a Series of Letters, so honourable both to Bp. Warburton and Dr. Doddridge, which should properly have been introduced with those to Dr. Forster in pp. 151-169. Most (but not all) of them were printed in 1790, in a very judicious and entertaining Collection of Letters to and from Dr. Doddridge, published by the Rev. T. Stedman, Vicar of St. Chad's, Shrewsbury. That curious volume is now rare; and I not only have obtained the worthy Editor's free consent to reprint them, but have been favoured by the loan of the Originals; by which several additions are now made, which had before been omitted from motives of delicacy now no longer existing. + In January, 1737 8, Mr. Warburton published the first volume of "The Divine Legation of Moses," &c.; and in March, a Vindication of the Author of that Work, from the Aspersions of the Country Clergyman's Letter, in the Weekly Miscellany of Feb. 14, 1737. The professed Editor of the Miscellany was Dr. William Webster. T. S. His name accordingly appears in that list. Mr. |